Living The Dream Farm

All midwesterners have been breathing a sigh of relief with the recent arrival of true spring. It really felt like it might never come! Better late than never, eh?

Finally we’ve been able to move our young rabbits, broiler chickens and meat ducks outdoors to their pastures, and the gardening has begun in a flurry/hurry. The “Field Garden” on the Southeastern side of our land dried out first, and Andrew got the beds prepared. We’ve got radishes, lettuces, arugula and spinach in, as well as all of our stout, homegrown onion plants and 200 lbs of organic seed potatoes. The potatoes are cut into chunks to maximize the sprouting eyes, so that hopefully we’ll have many more plants growing lots more potatoes. We’re hoping for a LOT of both delicious roots for our CSA members and our own supply. There is nothing like hashbrowns made from organic, fresh and local potatoes! We’re trying companion planting flowers and herbs between the potato rows to help deter and confuse potato beetles. Imagine Bachelor Buttons, Cosmos, Dill, Asters and Sweet Williams and Pinks blooming amongst the potato plants- Lovely!

The soil in our main garden space near the ducks’ area was still a bit too wet to work until 2 days ago, and now it’s all set up. We’ve been seeding sugar snap peas, green beans, scallions, beets, carrots, more “spring” greens, as well as transplanting baby kale, chard, lettuce, strawberries and cabbage. Soon the tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, eggplants, etc will go in. We can only get so much done each day, and playing catch up for over a month’s worth of gardening work is rather daunting. Our total gardening area is now nearly 2 acres  in size, and we feel rich, as well as ready for all the work to help our plants flourish. The forecast for the next few days is full of potential thunderstorms and rain, so we’ll finally get some time to get the dishes done and housework caught up while our seeds plump with moisture and sprout in the next week.

goat mania!

Our duck eggs are SO Fresh and SO DELICIOUS and now available at the Wedge Co-op, as well as Seward, Mississippi Market's 2 stores, Eastside Co-op, Linden Hills, & River Market Co-op in Stillwater.

We’re practicing “Mob-Grazing” with our ducks this year, where they have a nice new paddock full of fresh grass and weeds every 2 days. The absolutely LOVE it and their egg yolks show this burst of nutrients- gorgeous Orange & super thick. Free-range Duck eggs are our favorite food of all time, this is why they are our specialty at LTD Farm!

The adorable goslings have been spending the nice sunny days outdoors, but they are still too fragile to be out over night, so we let them play in the kitchen!

A mother goose sitting on her nest!

In the foreground, you can see another dedicated "nester," hoping for more goslings in about 2 weeks!

One more....3 of the quadruplets come running when they think a bottle of warm milk is waiting for them!

Awhile ago we received a lovely selection of custom cards from our friend Krista at Harvest Moon Backyard Farmers. The quality and feel of these cards impressed us and we decided to design and print our own LTD Farm Greeting Cards! They feature some of our all time favorite images from our daily life on the farm! Get an 8 pack for $20 plus tax (Shipping and handling included in price).   A Perfect Mother’s Day Gift!

There are 8 cards and envelopes in each pack. The cards are blank inside, making these adorable cards versatile for any occasion. You can easily purchase them online using our secure Paypal account. We’ll send them right out to you!

If we’d listened to our ducks instead of that darn groundhog, we’d have known this was going to be a LATE Spring. In a year with an early spring, they always begin laying eggs early. This year though, they waited until April to begin.               Thank you lady ducks for your delicious & nutritious eggs!

Quite the difference from last spring, when the trees were flowering and the ramps were coming up in the woods one month ahead of schedule. We have many things to be grateful for though, even if we are all suffering from spring fever. The drought conditions are dissipating and the apple trees are not going to bloom too early, which could cause an apple crop loss for all orchards. Here you can see an apple branch which has not yet bloomed, totally encased in ice!

Spring’s in full force @ LTD  regardless of the cold & snow. BABY GOATS! 

So far we’ve got 6 born from 3 moms, 5 boys and one girl. Their dad is an Alpine, and the does are an assortment of other breeds, so we have a very colorful kids! The mommas are nursing their kids this year, and we’ll be milking occasionally for milk to make soap with, and for our own use. We do not sell raw milk or goat cheese, as we are not a licensed dairy. The male goats, after a long and lovely summer and fall growing up on pasture with their moms, will be available as humanely raised & harvested meat in late fall. Contact us if you are interested. 

We’re excited to see the goatlings romping in the grass with their mommas, so ready to be seeding lettuce and radishes in the garden, to move our geese out of the hoophouse and out to graze in their pasture, the Bubsters bounding out of their chicken tractors each morning, devouring grass and bugs. It will come! Meanwhile we’re brooding baby chicks & ducklings in the kitchen, and incubating goose eggs in the bathroom. The livingroom is filling up with plant babies!  Normally we’d be able to move some of the cold hardy types of baby plants (like onions, kale, broccoli) out to the hoophouse this time of year, but it’s just too dang cold overnight still, so the living room gets fuller and fuller….

Over half of our 200 tomatoes are being grown from our own saved seeds from last year’s most unique and giant beauties. A massive purple tomato that was the most succulent and flavorful tomato we’ve ever eaten, a gorgeous & juicy Sunset toned monster, as well as seeds from a “volunteer” tomato plant that produced gigantic florescent orange tomatoes all by itself from a seed that fell in the path the season before!

Our friend Cris is working on creating a localized seed bank, and if our saved seeds grow true to type, we’re excited to contribute seeds from these amazing tomatoes and other veggie varieties we develop here on the farm.